


beneath skin and bone

by magisterequitum



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:47:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one knows how it happens. One night they go to sleep, and then the next morning there's a virus sweeping through the human population, and now they're on the run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beneath skin and bone

The air reeks of blood and rotted flesh and stale air. It’s disgusting, and even after months there’s still no getting used to it. The smell hits as soon as you walk into an area infested with them or a place they’ve passed through, and the only good thing is that it at least acts as a warning.

Her breath puffs out in the air before her, tiny white clouds in the blackness of the night. There’s gun fire from up ahead, the steady _poppoppop_ of a familiar weapon carried by a man she knows.

Natasha reaches out and touches the other man next to her. Her hand stills his raised bow, because even at the end of the world, bows and arrows still work just fine, and he looks over at her. “We have to go,” she says.

Clint stares at her in disbelief. She knows that he’ll fight it, knows that he doesn’t want to lose anyone else, they’ve lost too many already, but they can’t stay. And he doesn’t want them to linger around and wait on them. He’s doing this so they can get out. “No,” he shakes his head, defiant. “We’re not leaving him.”

She tightens her hand, digs fingers into the worn cotton covering his arm, curling into the muscle there. “He’s doing this so we can get out.”

His face falls, and he looks so old. They all are so old now. His features are gaunt, eyes sunken into his skull, and where once his sharp jawline and mouth would have been pleasing to look at, now they’re nothing but skin stretched across a skull that’s just trying to survive.

Tugging on his arm, she starts to pull him away. “We have to go,” she repeats, says it slower this time, and tries not to imagine how these creatures are going to tear his body apart when the two of them are gone and he runs out of bullets. Maybe he’ll be able to find something to use as a makeshift weapon for a little while. But eventually he’ll fall, everyone always does.

He lets her lead him away, and they run. Their feet are heavy steps on the pavement as they listen for anything following them. Nothing’s following them though, and that’s confirmed by the sudden silence of the gun shots and then the delighted shrieks and moans that follow their retreating their backs.

Coulson dies and then it’s just the two of them left.

—

The first to die are Steve and Tony.

No, that’s a lie. They don’t die, they disappear, and they might be dead; Clint thinks they are, Natasha’s still holding out because she has to have hope for something. The only thing they know is that they’re gone, and they haven’t found them again yet.

The first to die are Jane and her assistant and the doctor there.

No one knows how this started, how the world went to sleep one night and woke up the next with a virus tearing through the human population at such a rapid rate that no one can counter it. The virus turns humans rabid. Zombies is a term thrown around by CNN before all networks are dismantled and no more. It’s all a bit too Hollywood for that. This is real. This is people being torn apart, limb from limb, eaten by their once family members, former friends and lovers, neighbors, the guy you went to the bank to get a withdrawal from. Rotting flesh, entrails spilled over and out, skin hanging in stripped away pieces.

The three out in New Mexico die first, and what’s worse is that they all watch on the screens at HQ as they die. Heat doesn’t seem to deter this virus, like what some movies or theorists say. While they’re all trying to talk it out, try and make sense, discuss getting them out of there because their town’s overrun, their lab’s broken into.

They die quickly; it’s the only consolation, but something in Thor breaks then.

—

Fury sends them away, tells them to get out of New York City, out of the state, head north for the cold. If heat attracts them and helps them thrive, the cold might deter it or slow it down. They don’t see him again.

They lose Steve and Tony after an ambush one night. It’s not even on purpose, like with Coulson later, and it happens because they get separated. They’re in some town in upper Massachusetts, hunkered down for the night in what used to be a repair store, taking shifts sleeping and keeping watch.

One minute everything’s silent and then it’s screams and humanoid shapes bursting forth out of the darkness, moving on limbs that shouldn’t bend that way. Steve and Tony are on watch, and they leap into action first. The rest of them are slower to react.

“Jesus fucking christ,” Tony says over the low hum of his reactors firing up.

They flee into the night. Well, run, because Avengers don’t flee from anything. Somewhere around ducking into an alley between a deli and a laundry mat, they lose them. Maybe they went left when they went right or kept going straight. They don’t find them again, and they know they can’t enter back into the town no matter how much they want to.

Captain America and Iron Man disappear, but at least they’re together. That’s what they tell themselves.

—

Thor leaves after that.

Their group is now Natasha, Clint, Bruce, Coulson, and Thor.

Thor’s broken. He’s handy to have because the bites do nothing to him, and Mjolnir slams through zombies like no one’s business.

Natasha watches him though, and can see it. Everyone can see it. He’s broken, something had shifted in him when Jane got torn apart. He’s quiet, keeps to himself out of their group. She doesn’t know what to say to him; in truth, she doesn’t know what to say because she can’t fix this and it seems like the only thing he wants to hear is how to fix it.

She hears him talking to Coulson one night. Low voices while she’s supposed to be sleeping before taking the next watch.

“He’s out there,” she hears Thor say.

Coulson’s reply she can’t make out. It’s too soft and his body’s turned away from her.

Thor shakes his head, lank blond strands sticking to his neck and shoulders. “I know he is still here. He would not leave me.”

He’s gone in the morning, and now they’re down to four.

—

Bruce gets bit when he and Coulson go out to restock their food stores.

In Maine now, the only thing they have available is a Walmart, which they pray isn’t already run through and emptied. Praying loosely because none of them believe in much anymore, and certainly not God. Natasha would rather pray to a bottle of vodka, but they ran out of that weeks ago; she keeps it to herself that she believes that the others will reappear.

Clint’s rebinding the bottom of his boot, trying to salvage the leather because shoes are hard to come by. “This is shit.’

She looks up from where she’s threading a needle through her shirt; they’re all in ratty clothes now, jackets that don’t fit right to fight off the chill of approaching winter. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Coulson in jeans before till now. She says nothing.

He goes on, pulling tight on the strap. “What’s the fucking point to any of this?”

Anger burns through her now. “You’d have us just give up? Lay down and die?”

He looks up at her, eyes fierce. “Goddamn, Nat, what’s the point? No one’s coming back. No one’s coming to save us. This is it.”

They’re saving themselves, but failing at it.

“Shut up.” She kicks him, hard. “Say that again and I’ll kill you myself.”

“You promise?” Clint asks, and his gaze won’t let hers move away.

She’s saved from having to answer by the return of the other two.

Coulson comes back in, holding, halfway dragging Bruce with an arm around his shoulders and his waist. There’s blood on his jeans, bright red against the frayed denim.

And there’s blood on Bruce, a lot of it, an open gash across his shoulder and collarbone. She can see bone and muscle.

“Bruce,” Natasha says, voice soft and sad to her own ears, and so to everyone else too. She sees Clint’s hand tighten into fists next to her.

They lay him out on the floor, prop his head up, and hover around him. Coulson’s face is haggard, blame and guilt all over the deep lines there.

Bruce coughs, a wet sound in the room that reverberates off the walls. His hair is matted, but still wavy, and it reminds her of times she would see him bent over in his lab so long ago. He swallows, and then speaks to what all of them are thinking. “Kill me.”

The three of them say nothing.

“Don’t let me turn into one of them,” he continues.

It’s what has to be done, but it doesn’t mean they have to like it.

Coulson pulls the trigger, Natasha holds Bruce’s hand, and Clint hovers at her back, never taking his eyes off of him, even offering up a small smile.

—

Three and it’s like old times before the Avengers initiative was created.

They’re a good unit, moving across the Canadian border, and the temperature drops further.

They’re good until they’re not.

Coulson dies so they can live, and really it’s not a surprise. He’s been looking out for them so long.

—

She gets thrown, and suddenly there’s wood in her side. Fuck, she thinks, so stupid. And then she doesn’t get to think anymore because Clint goes crazy to get her out of there. His hands, the ones he used to clear a path with her in an impressive display of his skills, gently pull the plank out of her later.

She gets a fever by next afternoon.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he grits out from behind clenched teeth. They’re in an abandoned hotel, busted out windows and a sink that spits out brown water for five minutes before turning clear. He’s sitting on the bed beside her, and his face swims into her vision. There’s fear and anger and determination in his eyes.

“You promised,” he argues, turning to bullying now. “You promised me that you’d take care of me, not this instead.”

She doesn’t answer, finds it too hard to, and instead falls back into her delirious state of being partially awake. Clint doesn’t leave her, angling his body to keep lookout, but never leaving.

She thinks she’s dreaming when she sees the flash of green. It’s been so long since she’s witnessed that; her life from the Avengers seems so far in the past.

But no, Clint’s on his feet, body an aggressive stance and one hard line as he stares down the two tall figures that won’t come into focus for her. “Fix her,” he commands.

Natasha would laugh if she could and tell him he’s an idiot for trying to order a god to do anything against his wishes. And then she would laugh again and tell him she’d been right and he’d been wrong about Thor returning.

Loki bends over her, and his angular face comes into sharp focus. He clucks his tongue, must find the jagged stitches Clint attempted to be lacking, but places his hands on her wound.

She arches off the bed at the touch of his magic, wants to throw up at the feel of her skin knitting itself back together and the fever being burned out of her. Finally, he takes his hands away, and she collapses back against the mattress.

She does then laugh at Clint.

—

In the morning, the four of them sit around the hotel lobby, spaced out and plan what’s next.

Loki’s a black shadow at the window, peering out with narrowed eyes. “We could leave.”

He means leave as in this realm, not the town.

Natasha answers quickly, fingers untangling from her hair that’s grown too long again. “Not without Steve and Tony.”

Clint goes to make a scoffing noise, but she cuts him off, “Still now? And if any could live those two could.”

She’s read Tony’s file on how he survived in the Middle East, and with Steve there too, she has no doubts that they’re out there.

Thor nods, hand on Mjolnir. “Verily.”

She smiles despite the situation. She has missed his talking.

Loki sighs, and turns back to them. “If you insist.”

She does.


End file.
